I was at work today and a female E3 walks in wearing multi cam with a SF patch (spear head with knife and lightning bolts) and an airborne tab on her arm. It was the first time i had seen a female with an SF patch so i was surprised to see this, I thought females weren't eligible to particpate in the SF community.

i would normally ask my father this question, (he's a Ranger and been in since the late 80's) but he's in afghanistan right now, so i come to you guys to drop some knowledge on me,

i met a dude like this. i was at the vet center for anger management a few years back. he said he was with 1st force recon. but then it came out later that he was supply or motor t for them and never even left the states.

I was at work today and a female E3 walks in wearing multi cam with a SF patch (spear head with knife and lightning bolts) and an airborne tab on her arm. It was the first time i had seen a female with an SF patch so i was surprised to see this, I thought females weren't eligible to particpate in the SF community.

i would normally ask my father this question, (he's a Ranger and been in since the late 80's) but he's in afghanistan right now, so i come to you guys to drop some knowledge on me,

thanks in advance guys!

SF has a huge amount of support personnel, for example 7th group at carson has a whole bunch of facilities that has a crap load of support personnel.....they just rock the patch and airborne tab, doesnt meant their airborne or oda (SF).

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Matt is right.
A patch and airborne tab means that they are IN the unit, and SF units are different from an other unit, they have plenty of females.
The airborne tab is a part of the unit patch, and does not necessarily mean that the wearer is airborne qualified (you don't need to jump to be in an airborne unit). If they wear jump wings over their "US ARMY" name tape, then they have graduated jump school at some point. But there are a lot of airborne qualified Soldiers NOT in jumping units.

a Soldier who has graduated SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course) is authorized to wear the "special Forces" tab. That tab is worn forever, regardless of the unit they are in. Which is why you can find Soldiers with only SF tabs above unit patches. The SF patch does not have an SF tab over it by default, only the airborne tab.

On another note, it looks like the Army is opening up Ranger school to females, so they can get ranger tabs. They still can not serve AS rangers, but they want to allow women the opportunity to go to the school, so they can be as competitive for promotion as their male counterparts.

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Good Evening everyone.
Females are allowed in Psyops part of the SF. They started to allow females to serve in SF since our war is in a culture where females are forbidden to speak to male soldiers so female civilians may speak in comfort. Much respect to female soldiers. AND to Halfflash, you are wrong about the Ranger part. Female Soldiers are still forbidden to try out for Ranger but they are allowed to try out only for Airborne and Sapper. Btw, Army only authorizes 3 tabs and Airborne isnt a tab, its a patch.
Hooah

This might seem like splitting hairs but I feel like your post has some miss information..

Psyops is ATTACHED to SF units. They are not part of the SF community.

Halffash was saying that it looks like they are going to allow females to "try out" for ranger school soon. Not that they could.

Also the Army Authorizes 4 individual tabs: Ranger, Special Forces, Presidents 100, Sapper and if you are NG (Governors 20).

Airborne can be a Unit tab (ie: 82nd,173rd) just like Mountain (ie 10 mountain) and you dont have to be Airborne qualified to wear the airborne patch. There are Legs in the 82nd.

Not for very long. 99% of soldiers that inprocess at Bragg are Airborne qualified. There are a few that arrive not qualified but will usually wind up on their way to Benning in a few weeks. Failure to qualify will have you PCSing real quick to another post.

As for the original question, yes there are woman and men that wear the 5th Group patch because they are assigned to one the various support units. They are not Special Forces qualified and do not wear the Green Beret. Many years ago even the support personnel wore the Green Beret but that was changed around the early nineties and they began wearing the maroon beret.

Not for very long. 99% of soldiers that inprocess at Bragg are Airborne qualified. There are a few that arrive not qualified but will usually wind up on their way to Benning in a few weeks. Failure to qualify will have you PCSing real quick to another post.

Not entirely true. Unless it's changed in the last 2 years. There are whole battalion sized units on Bragg that are not airborne. I was there for three years, and was denied a seat at airborne school multiple times. My unit just didn't have a reason to send any one. 50th Signal is still on bragg, and wearing those ugly black berets.

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Not for very long. 99% of soldiers that inprocess at Bragg are Airborne qualified. There are a few that arrive not qualified but will usually wind up on their way to Benning in a few weeks. Failure to qualify will have you PCSing real quick to another post.

I can attest to that. I never saw anyone in Division not qualified. 18th Abn Corp and its supporting units on the other hand had tons of legs. Most got put on chute detail during ops. AFAIK every person in 82nd has to be qualified. SF for sure has females ,not on teams but def in support commands.

Good Evening everyone.
Females are allowed in Psyops part of the SF. They started to allow females to serve in SF since our war is in a culture where females are forbidden to speak to male soldiers so female civilians may speak in comfort. Much respect to female soldiers. AND to Halfflash, you are wrong about the Ranger part. Female Soldiers are still forbidden to try out for Ranger but they are allowed to try out only for Airborne and Sapper. Btw, Army only authorizes 3 tabs and Airborne isnt a tab, its a patch.
Hooah

You bring up an almost month old topic to say what exactly? Not to mention some of the info you posted was incorrect as 11B pointed out. With a name like yours are you even in? Also, the Army is looking into allowing females to attend Ranger School, just what Halfflash said.

psy ops is part of the special operations community just like civil affairs. they wear unit patches that have Abn tab over them. they are part of uscapoc. they do work with the special forces community.

also psy ops has been renamed to miso, military information support operations

they have specialized training for female soldiers that test, qualify,trained, then get attached to ranger and sf teams to work in the community. met a few of them, pure warriors. some have been KIA too during ops.

It is only a matter of time before every career field is open to all genders. Israelis let women serve in special operations with great success. We pig headed males are just gonna have to get used to the idea.

I was at Luke when the first female fighter pilot showed up for training. Seemed really odd. Lots of people said it was an experiment bound to fail. Now they are common place. Not only did they make good pilots, turns out the best drone pilots are women. Sadly drones are the future...and they are kicking *** there (I'm a romantic when it comes to flying so I would rather see somebody in the cockpit but it is not up to me). My point is women are excelling in many a military role the experts were convinced they would fail at. Those roles are going to increase, not decrease.

I was also in a MAPS flight that was loaned out to special operations units from all of the various services and sent all around the globe. Yes we were support, but this was 20 years ago when the idea of woman even in a support role was unheard of. We had a female in our flight. The first female ever to serve in such a flight. She wasn't knocking down doors, but she did deploy and was at the forward operating base (a make shift runway in the middle of no where a few miles from the target with a few tents and a radio). It was shocking at the time. Now they are common place.

It is simply a matter of time. It will happen. When it does it will be shocking to people's sensibilities. Then it will quickly become common place. You don't have to like it, but it will happen. The roles of women are constantly expanding in the military and will continue to do so.

There was a time when people took the same attitude towards people of color. In my grandfather's day half the people in special ops would have been relegated to cleaning the mess. The idea that they could contribute more would have been dismissed by all out of hand and seemed laughable. Times change. Society changes. The military changes with it. It is human nature.

You have a choice. You can be the modern equivelent to the guy who laughed at blacks back in the day...or you can have an open mind.

I was at Luke when the first female fighter pilot showed up for training. Seemed really odd. Lots of people said it was an experiment bound to fail. Now they are common place. Not only did they make good pilots, turns out the best drone pilots are women. Sadly drones are the future...and they are kicking *** there (I'm a romantic when it comes to flying so I would rather see somebody in the cockpit but it is not up to me). My point is women are excelling in many a military role the experts were convinced they would fail at. Those roles are going to increase, not decrease.

I was also in a MAPS flight that was loaned out to special operations units from all of the various services and sent all around the globe. Yes we were support, but this was 20 years ago when the idea of woman even in a support role was unheard of. We had a female in our flight. The first female ever to serve in such a flight. She wasn't knocking down doors, but she did deploy and was at the forward operating base (a make shift runway in the middle of no where a few miles from the target with a few tents and a radio). It was shocking at the time. Now they are common place.

It is simply a matter of time. It will happen. When it does it will be shocking to people's sensibilities. Then it will quickly become common place. You don't have to like it, but it will happen. The roles of women are constantly expanding in the military and will continue to do so.

There was a time when people took the same attitude towards people of color. In my grandfather's day half the people in special ops would have been relegated to cleaning the mess. The idea that they could contribute more would have been dismissed by all out of hand and seemed laughable. Times change. Society changes. The military changes with it. It is human nature.

You have a choice. You can be the modern equivelent to the guy who laughed at blacks back in the day...or you can have an open mind.

Cool story bro.

You said IDF used women with great success and in response to that I posted a picture implying you were either trolling or stupid.

That is because their roles are extremely limited. Most of the claims of female IDF SF is either in support or medical roles, the exeptions being the border police's SF unit and canine handlers at vehicle checkpoints. Make no mistake, they are not on the front lines, kicking in doors, and forcing terrorists by hand to eat the dirt.

And Israel is in a much different situation than us anyhow.

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That is because their roles are extremely limited. Most of the claims of female IDF SF is either in support or medical roles, the exeptions being the border police's SF unit and canine handlers at vehicle checkpoints. Make no mistake, they are not on the front lines, kicking in doors, and forcing terrorists by hand to eat the dirt.

And Israel is in a much different situation than us anyhow.

This may be the only instance of a female Israeli soldier in actual combat since the war of independence:

They don't. The only unit where women can be said to participate as typical combat soldiers is Karakal, which has been tasked with patrolling a god-forsaken, quiet strip of desert on the border with Egypt (which is probably much less quiet these last few weeks). It's not a special forces unit, really, just a unit with a less mainstream task. They do generic infantry training from what I've heard.

they are more Air Assault than anything else IIRC. an first seargant called them the screaming chickens.

Haha that's a good one. You're right in that they call themselves an AA division but that doesn't mean ****. They call themselves an AA division because they have an AA school there. Guess where I went to AA school? Cold *** Fort Drum. They wanted to keep some type of "designation" after not being an airborne unit anymore.

As far as I know there's only the 173rd, 82nd and 25th airborne divisions. There may be NG units but I'm only talking active.

As far as I know there's only the 173rd, 82nd and 25th airborne divisions. There may be NG units but I'm only talking active.

509th "Geronimo" as well, aka OPFOR at Polk...well never mind they're just a Batt, not a Division so disregard.

But yeah the good 'ole Puking Seagulls were no longer considered a Airborne unit after Vietnam if I'm not mistaken.

Also I did 6 1/2 years in Bragg, we had plenty of NAP there. We had a prior service guy in my Company who was there for 4 years and never went to Jump School but you can bet he was on every chute shakeout haha.

I know FET's (Female Engagement Teams) were just starting to become a pretty big thing once I started ETS'n, but like previously mentioned I think they are just attachments, although I think they still have to go through a variation of SERE.

The 101 isn't even an airborne unit anymore. They keep the tab for the history.

You are right they are more air assault with the nick name dope on the rope. When I was in there were only 3 airborne units left, 82nd Fort Bragg, A unit in Alaska, and I believe it was 113th in Italy.

You are right they are more air assault with the nick name dope on the rope. When I was in there were only 3 airborne units left, 82nd Fort Bragg, A unit in Alaska, and I believe it was 113th in Italy.

I still don't get how they are air assault. I did AA school at Drum but we don't call ourselves that. It's not like the 101 gets extra AA training, they simply have their own qualified school there. The airborne unit in Italy is the 173rd. When I was thinking of reenlisting that was my second choice if I couldn't get a RIP (RASP now?) contract.

Watch the beginning of "We Were Solders" or better yet, read the book. It goes into a bit of detail of how the 101st was transitioned from a classical airborne division into this new concept of "air mobile" then "air assault." Then look at how they were used in Desert Storm - that's what sets them apart from other infantry divisions.

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If you’re driven by partisan tribalism more than ideology, if getting in rhetorical digs at liberals thrills you more than persuading adversaries or achieving policy victories, it makes sense that you would fight substantively inconsequential battles with no more or less vigor than any other…

I think it's in the genes, her dad was 1st Cav. during Desert Shield/Storm.

Used to be a pretty common thing to see families where every generation served in one way or another. You still see it, but it seems to be more rare.

My family is one such family, though not ever member has served and personally I think we do not put enough emphasis on it. My grandfather served, my uncles served, I served. My father was a private contractor during Vietnam as a pilot so he served in his own way. But the next generation seems to have no interest in doing so. My nephew could have attended an academy. His father had the political connections and he had the grades. He just lacked interest. It's disappointing, but you don't want to tell them that. It's their life and you want them to know you support them.

In any case, I can imagine you are extremely proud of both your son and granddaughter. As you should be. You're a lucky man.

Well I don't buy either of your arguments. You were trying to be insulting, you just didn't expect it to backfire on you. Because you know how uncool it is to insult people's military service even if they weren't in as cool a unit as yours. And my post does pertain the subject at hand. The role of women in the military is expanding. I cited first hand examples of how those roles have changed just in the past 20 years or so. 20 years ago it was pilots, subs and support staff. Soon enough, if not already, it will be special operations. 20 years ago if you told somebody the Air Force had combot controllers that did what they do people would not have believed you. As far as they were concerned the air force just flew the planes and everybody was a pilot. Even guys who served with them in the field had no idea they were Air Force and that the Air Force did those kinds of things. Now days pretty much everyone has heard of them. There is always more going on out there than most people, even those actively serving, know about. Thus it would not surprise me to find out a year or two from now that women are serving in special operations units, just we were not told about it because of the very nature of those units...and to do so would put a GIANT spot light on a soldier/sailor/airman/marine who need anonymity to do their job. Hence there is a possibility a tab could mean more than we think...if not today, then soon enough.

The problem is not the women. It is the men and our mindset when it comes to women. We see a pretty girl with her face all shot up and we freak out. We spend time trying to save a woman that cannot be saved instead of moving on to somebody we can save or continuing on with the mission as ordered. That's the only argument I've heard against women serving in combat roles that made sense to me. But it is flawed. As women in combat becomes a normal thing, the attitudes of the men serving with them will change.

As for the mental toughness issue, and the physical prowess issue, selection solves that. If they cannot hack selection with the same gender neutral standards then they shouldn't get in. If they can...then they should be allowed to. Few men can hack it. I would assume even fewer women would be able to as well. So either you have faith in the selection process to weed out those who can't do the job or you don't. And if you don't...then what does that say about the process itself and those who have passed it?

I served with women that had no business being in the military. Wrong mindset. Wrong attitude. Wrong everything. Just as I served with men who had no business being in the military for the same reasons. They get found out pretty quickly and get shuffled into role where they can do little to no harm if not kicked out all together. I also served with women I would absolutely trust to have my back in a firefight and would want by my side in a fox hole over plenty of the men in my flight. It was all about mindset and skillset...not gender. The fact that they were more fun to look at was just a bonus.

Well I don't buy either of your arguments. You were trying to be insulting, you just didn't expect it to backfire on you. Because you know how uncool it is to insult people's military service even if they weren't in as cool a unit as yours. And my post does pertain the subject at hand. The role of women in the military is expanding. I cited first hand examples of how those roles have changed just in the past 20 years or so. 20 years ago it was pilots, subs and support staff. Soon enough, if not already, it will be special operations. 20 years ago if you told somebody the Air Force had combot controllers that did what they do people would not have believed you. As far as they were concerned the air force just flew the planes and everybody was a pilot. Even guys who served with them in the field had no idea they were Air Force and that the Air Force did those kinds of things. Now days pretty much everyone has heard of them. There is always more going on out there than most people, even those actively serving, know about. Thus it would not surprise me to find out a year or two from now that women are serving in special operations units, just we were not told about it because of the very nature of those units...and to do so would put a GIANT spot light on a soldier/sailor/airman/marine who need anonymity to do their job. Hence there is a possibility a tab could mean more than we think...if not today, then soon enough.

The problem is not the women. It is the men and our mindset when it comes to women. We see a pretty girl with her face all shot up and we freak out. We spend time trying to save a woman that cannot be saved instead of moving on to somebody we can save or continuing on with the mission as ordered. That's the only argument I've heard against women serving in combat roles that made sense to me. But it is flawed. As women in combat becomes a normal thing, the attitudes of the men serving with them will change.

As for the mental toughness issue, and the physical prowess issue, selection solves that. If they cannot hack selection with the same gender neutral standards then they shouldn't get in. If they can...then they should be allowed to. Few men can hack it. I would assume even fewer women would be able to as well. So either you have faith in the selection process to weed out those who can't do the job or you don't. And if you don't...then what does that say about the process itself and those who have passed it?

I served with women that had no business being in the military. Wrong mindset. Wrong attitude. Wrong everything. Just as I served with men who had no business being in the military for the same reasons. They get found out pretty quickly and get shuffled into role where they can do little to no harm if not kicked out all together. I also served with women I would absolutely trust to have my back in a firefight and would want by my side in a fox hole over plenty of the men in my flight. It was all about mindset and skillset...not gender. The fact that they were more fun to look at was just a bonus.

Dude if you honestly took my post as insulting you need much thicker skin. You were in the military correct? Why are you taking this as a personal attack? You should have learned to not take anything personal. Plus it looks pretty stupid for you to call me out on insults when you posted an image attempting to do the same thing. The difference is I laughed at the picture you posted because it was funny. I didn't ***** about it. I have no problem with you or your views. It's great you are in favor of women serving in combat roles but you don't need to try and turn this into a personal argument.

Have you served as a combat MOS with a deployment to a COP in the middle of nowhere? If you have then your views on women serving in those roles is unique as the guys who have been in those positions all disagree with you. I'm not asking you that in a negative way at all. It's different for someone who has never been there to say women can do it when they simply do not understand the circumstances. You claim men will not favor women more if they are serving with them regularly. That is completely false. Why? It still happens in non-infantry units today. A convoy gets hit and women are the first to be attended to. The IDF did it and it was a terrible choice.

I don't disagree with you that it will probably happen. That doesn't mean it's a good idea. You keep bringing up points that something didn't happen twenty years ago. Just because something changes doesn't mean it's the right move. How is the Army going to provide the proper living spaces for the few females in a line platoon when that platoon doesn't even have enough space for all their men?

Again, if you took anything I said as an insult I don't know what to tell you. I'm not going to apologize for something that you are taking way too seriously.